WP-FB-AutoConnect – BuddyPress Plugin Review

Facebook is no doubt the most popular social networking site and almost everyone on the internet has a Facebook account. So, wouldn’t it be nice if your users could log into your BuddyPress site with their existing Facebook login credentials? This is just what the plugin WP-FB-AutoConnect aims to do.

It claims that although there are already a lot of other “Facebook Connect” plugins, WP-FB-AutoConnect is one of the most simple to use and customize. So, I went ahead and installed the plugin to see if it is really as easy as the developer claims it to be.

First off, I needed to set up an application on Facebook for our website, which was pretty easy given the straightforward instructions on the plugin’s homepage. After setting up the application, installing the plugin was a matter of going to our website’s dashboard and installing it from there, which is pretty much the same way all other BuddyPress plugins are installed.

After activating the plugin, the instructions said that a Facebook button will automatically be added to its built-in login panel. However, this was not the case when I went to our site’s home page. Instead, I had to add the WP-FB-AutoConnect widget to the sidebar, which was also mentioned in the instructions given. Although I had to add the widget before the Facebook button appeared, the extra step wasn’t that much of a hassle and I didn’t really mind having to do it.

I then tried logging into our site using the “Login with Facebook” button and a window popped up requesting my permission to connect with my Facebook page. After approving the permission, I was successfully logged on to our site. I didn’t have to do much after that and after I tried to log out and log in again using the same button, and I wasn’t asked the same permission request a second time.

From a user perspective, not having too many pop-up windows and the simplicity of logging in using the widget is very much welcome. You don’t have to go through layers of permissions just to be able connect your Facebook account with your favorite BuddyPress site.

From the perspective of someone installing the plugin, it was very straightforward and the ease of being able to install the plugin even for someone installing a plugin for the first time is a great thing.